This book offers snapshots of sex work in global history, examining how it has differed in different places around the world at different points in time. Focusing on certain moments in certain places and examinations of historical lives, it offers a diverse approach with a heavy focus on lived experience to see what selling sex was like instead of what it “meant”. Therefore, this book aims to argue that selling sex has been different at different times and present the diversity of experience in sex work throughout history, through case studies and comparisons. Aimed for students, scholars, and general readers alike, Histories of Sex Work Around the World provides an introduction to the history of sex work within a global perspective. The case studies cover a wide range of topics and geographical regions – from North America to Mexico City to Vietnam, spanning across 12 different countries and over 400 years of history, before considering the future of sex work in the internet age. Furthermore, this book features chapters with personal accounts from writers with experience selling sex, managing a brothel, or working as a dancer. It also includes a foreword from renowned writer and historian Julia Laite, author of bestselling book The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey.

Selling Sex in the City offers a worldwide analysis of prostitution since 1600. It analyses more than 20 cities with an important sex industry and compares policies and social trends, coercion and agency, but also prostitutes' working and living conditions.

Authored by one of the most original contemporary thinkers on the subject, this book is an enlightening illustrated cultural history of the sex trade that puts sex workers center stage, revealing how they have lived and worked all around the globe. The history of selling sex is a hidden one—and too often its practitioners are pushed to the margins of history. This book redresses the balance, revealing the history of the sex trade through the eyes of sex workers, from medieval streets to Wild West saloons, and from brothels to state bedrooms. These enthralling tales are brought to life by Whores of Yore creator Kate Lister’s witty and authoritative text, and illuminated by a rich archive of photographs, artworks, and objects offering insight into sex workers’ lives, challenging assumptions about this age-old trade. Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts’ chapters are structured thematically in a broadly chronological order, each one introducing a lively cast of complex and entertaining characters operating in an array of different periods, locations, and settings. In ancient Mesopotamia, the harlot Shamhat was powerful and respected, able to civilize the wild man Enkidu through her charms. In medieval London, Elizabeth Moryng serviced religious clergy under the guise of an embroidery business, though she was eventually jailed for being a prolific panderer and bawd. In the hedonistic floating world of Edo, Japan, Kabuki actresses and geishas entertained and pleasured their patrons. Lister’s engaging and illuminating tales invite readers to look, listen, and reconsider everything they thought they knew about the world’s oldest profession. Together, these captivating tales of sex workers from around the world and throughout history provide a powerful context to contemporary debates about sexuality and the empowerment of women.

“[An] enlightening and entertaining . . . survey of the world’s oldest profession” from the Whore of Babylon to the modern sex-worker movement (Kirkus Reviews). From Eve and Lilith to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, the prostitute has been both a target of scorn and a catalyst for social change. In Love for Sale, cultural historian Nils Johan Ringdal delivers an authoritative and engaging history of this most maligned, yet globally ubiquitous, form of human commerce. Beginning with the epic of Gilgamesh, the Old Testament, and ancient cultures from Asia to the Mediterranean, Ringdal considers the varying way societies have dealt with and thought about prostitutes through history. He discusses how they were included in the priestess class in ancient Greece and Rome; how the rise of the courtesan in nineteenth-century Europe shaped literature, fashion, the arts, and modern sensibilities. He uncovers the first manuals on the art of sex and seduction, the British Empire’s campaigns against prostitution in India, and stories of the Japanese “comfort women” who served the armies in the Pacific theater of World War II. Ringdal closes with the rise of the sex-workers’ rights movement and ‘sex-positive” feminism, and a realistic look at the true risks and rewards of prostitution in the present day. Recalling Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae with its broad sweep across centuries and continents, Love for Sale “uses [its] subject as a springboard for exploring the ever-changing notions of love, sexual identity, morality and gender among various cultures” (Nan Goldberg, Newark Sunday Star-Ledger).

"A study of the economics of sex work"--

How the law harms sex workers—and what they want instead Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make it clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.

“A fascinating collection from a group of courageous women who created the first publication to explore sex work in a compelling and intelligent way.” —Candida Royalle $pread, an Utne Award–winning magazine by and for sex workers, was independently published from 2005 to 2011. This collection features enduring essays about sex work around the world, first-person stories that range from deeply traumatic to totally hilarious, analysis of media and culture, and fantastic illustrations and photos produced just for the magazine. The book also features the previously untold story of $pread and how it has built a wider audience in its posthumous years. What started as a community tool and trade magazine for the sex industry quickly emerged as the essential guide for people curious about sex work, for independent magazine enthusiasts, and for labor and civil rights activists.